Phonics - our intent
At Iveson Primary School, we have adopted a new DfE validated systematic, synthetic phonics programme known as Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS). The programme is designed to teach our children from Reception to the end of Key Stage 1 to become fluent, lifelong readers.
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) teaches children how to read quickly and ensures all learners ‘keep up’ with the pace of the programme with fluency and confidence. It does this through consistent lesson structure, resources and language from the very beginning of their Iveson journey. This minimises cognitive load and increasing children’s success.
We acknowledge that children need to be taught the key skills in decoding to be able to complete the Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 1. We also value and encourage our children to read for enjoyment and recognise that this starts with the foundations of acquiring letter sounds, segmenting and blending skills.
Phonics and reading are essential tools to access the whole curriculum, to engage and make sense of knowledge and to explore, question and respond to the world. A strong phonics foundation ensures our children flourish as readers and therefore develop socially, emotionally, intellectually and culturally.
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) teaches children how to read quickly and ensures all learners ‘keep up’ with the pace of the programme with fluency and confidence.
Iveson Primary School
Phonics in Early Years:
Essential Letters and Sounds teaches children to read using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. It is designed to be used as part of an early learning environment that is rich in talk and story, where children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches children to:
- decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
- encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.
At Iveson, during the first few days in Reception whole class, daily phonics teaching begins. Through the rigorous ELS teaching programme, children will build an immediate understanding of the relationship between the sounds they can hear and say (phonemes) and the written sounds (graphemes).
Children will be taught the skills to achieve the following Early Learning Goals. Children at the expected level of development will:
- Say a sound for each letter in the alphabet and at least 10 digraphs.
- Read words consistent with their phonic knowledge by sound-blending.
Read aloud simple sentences and books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge, including some common exception words.
Coming soon
Nursery
AD – ‘A’ is the first sound in my name. I like ‘s’ and ‘t’.
Reception
MD- I like to read my reading book every day. Sometimes I find it tricky.
I like alien words they are funny!
AZ – I like writing all the sounds. Our sound is ‘ue’ the sky’s blue.
EM – I like the harder to read words I can do them all!
JL – I like to write in our green books (activity books) to read the sounds and words.
Year 1
PH – I like learning the new sounds.
BM – I enjoy writing the words.
SLH – I enjoy reading the sentences and the harder to read and spell words.
OA – I enjoy when we read the words and see the pictures.
CG – I enjoy saying the sounds.
JW – I like counting the sounds.
EA – I like practicing the alien words.
AV – I love learning the new sounds.
VN – I like all the sounds we have learnt. My favourite is ‘ir – a quirky shirt’.
I enjoy writing the sentences because they are long and hard.
KS – I like when we do robot words and sound them out.
EM – Phonics helps us to read harder to read and spell words and hard books.
GA – I enjoy practising the sounds with the cards.
